What they said about ...

The broadcast tonight on Channel Five of a documentary featuring secretly filmed footage of unruly classroom behaviour had commentators questioning the state of discipline in English schools. The Sunday Express's Julia Hartley-Brewer reckoned Classroom Chaos, in which a supply teacher filmed six of the 15 schools she was assigned to over six months, "will horrify every parent".

None of the schools portrayed had poor Ofsted reports, noted Libby Purves in the Times. But what the film revealed was "the phenomenon comfortably described by inspectors as 'low-level disruption'", she said. "Nobody gets knifed or raped but pupils shout, fight, swear, throw missiles and wander around classrooms ignoring staff."

This type of behaviour was not outrageous, said Deborah Orr in the Independent. But "it was the quotidian quality of the disruption that was the most upsetting thing." The problem of disruptive pupils has been part of the education debate at both a political and school level for decades, continued Orr, "yet it is quite a testament to the degree to which those complaints are not heard, that even the protagonist of this film had been unaware of what the phrase 'disruptive pupils' really meant."

Classroom Chaos comes in the same week the London School of Economics published a report that showed Britain had a worse record for social mobility than Canada, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. "Pretty well all our social problems can be traced back to the deficiencies of our education system: yobbishness, disrespect, rising violence, national stupidity," said the Daily Mail's Stephen Glover. Yet pupils continue to receive "sub-standard education" despite the government's record spending on schools.

The connection between "social immobility" and disruptive classroom behaviour was clear, argued Purves in the Times. Most teachers "want to lead children upward, not hit them or herd them into penitentiaries", she said. However, with 9% of secondary schools suffering from "persistent and unsatisfactory" behaviour, a 50% increase since 2000, "it is clear that the fever must be curbed. My liberal instinct ... is always the carrot. But sticks may have their place."